Long guides on writing, editing and publishing — the thinking behind every tool on this site.
A YouTube title has one job: make the right person click. That is a different job from describing the video, and most titles fail because they do the second thing instead of the first.
Read article →Hyphens are where title case goes wrong most often, because the rule depends on what the second half of the word is and which guide you are following.
Read article →Chicago is the house style of book publishing. AP is the house style of news. They capitalize the same title differently, and the difference is mostly about prepositions.
Read article →Everyone agrees that "the" stays small in the middle of a title. The argument starts at "with", "between" and "is". Here is where each style guide draws the line.
Read article →APA has the most mechanical title case rule of any style guide, which is good news: once you know the four-letter test, you can apply it without a reference book.
Read article →Most arguments about capital letters in headings are really one question: are you writing a title, or a sentence? Decide that and the rest follows.
Read article →The writing is the hard part and you have already done it. Publishing is a sequence of decisions. Here is what each one is and how to make it quickly.
Read article →Changing twenty words in a five-hundred-word piece can change how the whole thing reads. The words that do the most damage are usually the invisible ones.
Read article →A paragraph is a contract with the reader. It starts with a promise, delivers on it, and hands the reader to the next one. Most fall apart at step one.
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